El Conde 4 ½ stars
Just in time for Halloween comes my discovery and viewing of the 2023 vampire movie El Conde, by Chilean director Pablo Larrain who must be my favorite Latin director after Guillermo del Toro. I have seen several of his successful movies including Spencer, Jackie and No. In El Conde Larrain combines two of my favorite genres of comedy horror and political satire creating a real fright fest. Filmed in black and white, the movie takes on fascist figures making them out to be viscous monsters. At the beginning of the movie, we meet a French soldier named Claude Pinoche serving France under Louis XVI and see him witness the beheading of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. Fearing for his life he runs away, but we learn that Pinoche is a vampire and thus blessed with a long life. For two centuries he travels to Haiti, Russia and Algeria vowing to fight against revolutions as a soldier, while serving under merciless dictators. He finds his way to Chile in 1935 where he rises to the rank of general and eventually overthrows the socialist government of Allende in 1973 and becomes the new dictator of Chile, killing hundreds during his brutal reign. Thus, Pinoche is actually Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell), the fascist ruler of Chile, only he is a vampire. After being driven from power, having lived for 250 years he dies in 2006, except that his death was faked, allowing him to live on his country estate. (There he happens to have a giant guillotine that gets put to use.) He is joined by his corrupt wife, Lucia (Gloria Munchmeyer), his five children and his longtime butler, Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), a Russian Cossack devoted to his master. Pinochet now goes by the title, The Count. (Hence, the name of the movie), but he would like nothing better than to just die. During his reign, besides all the killing, Pinochet has robbed the country of a fortune and hidden it in various countries all over the world. His children would like him dead so that they can inherit the money, but the problem is The Count was bad at accounting and has lost track of it. So, the family hires a forensic accountant in the form of a young catholic nun named Carmen who is to track down the money by scouring through the records and interviewing the family members. She would also like to exorcise the demon out of Pinochet, something The Count isn’t so keen on. The Catholic Church having sent Carmen to do the job, is hoping they can get their hands on the fortune too. Now having a young beautiful nun around has reinvigorated The Count causing him to rethink his desire to die. The end result is him renewing his reign of terror on the country, flying by night to seek fresh blood. (His preferred method of consumption of blood is to place the human heart in a blender and make a blood smoothie. Points for originality on that one!) Larrain has taken on fascist dictators before in his works including The Club and No. In El Conde he really goes after Pinochet, satirizing this ruthless ruler portraying him and his family as greedy monsters. The movie is really a condemnation of fascists everywhere, sending us a warning of what they can do to a country. Pinochet even says that he wants to destroy the International Criminal Court. (I think I have heard that before.) There is one other character that I must mention, that being the narrator who speaks in the voice of an older British woman. She turns out to be Pinochet’s mother and is also a vampire and is someone of great importance in world politics, but you will have to watch the movie to find out her identity.